became apparent, an uneasy feeling began to stir within Reza. There was something familiar about the leader. Something…
For just a moment, he faltered, his heart stopping with realization.
“What’s wrong, Reza,” Ian asked. “Reza?”
The two Kreelan figures continued to advance, slower now, and Ian saw that one of them had hair that was completely white, the snowy braids coiled around her upper arms like stately serpents around gleaming ebony trees. As they got closer, he could also see that her face was black below the eyes, as if she had cried in tears of ink.
Reza watched as she came to within arm’s length, but his mind refused to believe what his eyes told him. His heart had begun to beat again, but with the surge of warm blood through his limbs also came the heat of tears to his eyes as he looked upon the woman he thought he would never see again.
“Esah-Zhurah,” he whispered, unable to believe his eyes. “Is it possible?” he said in the Old Tongue, “Can it truly be you?”
For a moment, she only stood there, her deep green eyes searching his, her mind grappling with her own disbelief. “Your eyes do not deceive you, my love… my Reza.”
They reached out to one another in the greeting of warriors, of peers, clasping their arms tightly. Each was afraid that the other was only an illusion, that a mere touch would shatter the dream. But they were real. They were together.
Reza reached a hand toward her face, the armored gauntlet seemingly invisible to the nerves in his trembling fingers as they made contact with her skin. Her own arms reached for him, cupping his face in her hands, his skin where she touched him burning with a wondrous fire.
“How I have thought of you each day of my life, my love,” she said as they drew closer, the world around them fading to nothing, the Universe itself contracting into haunted, loving eyes, the touch of flesh upon flesh. “The pain of your banishment has never left me. The mourning marks have never gone away.”
“My own heart has been empty without you, Esah-Zhurah,” he whispered as her face came close to his, and his senses, denied the communion of blood that he had given up when he left, drowned themselves in her touch, her look, her scent. “I have lived each moment in hopes of someday again seeing you, touching you, one last time before Death came, but I never believed it would come to pass.” With her face so close that he could feel the heat of her body like a roiling flame, he said, “I love you.”
Their lips touched, just barely, and Reza felt the hard and terribly lonely years that had come between them melt away like soft steel in a white-hot furnace. A kiss more gentle, more passionate, there had never been.
They ran their hands along the braids of the other as their lips pressed together more firmly, their tongues greeting like the old lovers they were. Time kindly stood aside to let them enjoy this one moment that it could not, in good conscience, deny them.
As one, as if the union they had once made in spirit and blood had never been broken, Esah-Zhurah and Reza pulled themselves away from one another with no less reluctance than two planets overcoming their mutual attraction to spin away toward opposite ends of the galaxy. Shivering with the power of desires and needs that could never be satisfied, their hearts crying in anguish at the hand they knew Fate would this day deal to them, they stood face to face not as lovers, but as warriors.
As enemies.
“You would defend them, Reza?” Esah-Zhurah asked, fighting to control her trembling voice.
“Yes, Esah-Zhurah,” he said unsteadily, his tongue leaden in his mouth. “Long have they lived in this place, and much have they suffered for it. According to the Legend of The One, in Her name I claim the right of Challenge.”
Esah-Zhurah surveyed the human who had accompanied Reza, noting that he had already suffered physical harm before coming to this place. But she felt no fear from him, only determination, courage. Behind him, standing silently in the swirling mist, were the others who had come to serve the Challenge. Males and females, large and small, dressed in rags and without armor to protect their fragile bodies, she sensed that they had come here with no intent to flee. Their hearts beat quickly, but with anticipation, not with fear. “You choose your companions wisely, my love,” she said. “The right is yours,” she said quietly. “I accept your Challenge.”
Reza bowed his head deeply. The sacrifice the Mallorys were about to make would not be in vain. Their people would be spared.
“In Her name,” Esah-Zhurah said, her heart filled with bitter ashes at the knowledge that Reza had come here to save the kin of these people who offered themselves up to her, that he had come here to die, “let it be done.”
With a final embrace, their hearts broken by the weight of duty and the injustice of Fate, the two separated, turning back to begin the short march to their respective lines.
“Who is she, Reza?” Ian asked uncertainly.
“She is… my wife,” Reza replied with an effort to keep his voice even. It was the closest relationship he could imagine in human terms to describe his relationship with Esah-Zhurah.
Ian did not hide his shock well. “I can’t ask a man to kill his own wife,” he said. “This is our land, and we’ll pay for it, Reza. There’s no need–”
“It is as it must be,” Reza told him woodenly. “Pray to your God that I may have the strength to do what must be done.” Reza knew that the only sword on the field that could slay Esah-Zhurah was his own, and that to save any of the seven hundred Mallorys who had gathered here this day he would have to kill her.
“I don’t know how to thank you for all that you’ve done, Reza,” Ian said quietly, “but your name will never be forgotten on Erlang.”
They took their place in the center of the line, a few paces in front of the rest.
Reza drew his sword, holding it easily in his right hand, the blade shimmering in the sun. “Let it begin,” he whispered.
As one, with hearts beating cadence to their marching feet, the fourteen hundred warriors of the two battle lines started forward.
Thirty-Seven
“Stand by for transpace sequence… Five… Four… Three… Two… One…” The ship’s klaxon sounded twice to announce that
In the massive port launch bay, Nicole sat in her fighter, impatiently waiting. “What is the matter?” she snapped into her comm link. “Why have I not been launched?”
“Standby, CAG,” the chief of the bay advised. “We’re showing some problems with your catapult.”
Nicole could feel the thumps in the hull as the ship’s other catapults began to hurl the fighters into space. They were not able to launch in hyperspace, of course, since the fighters had no hyperdrives themselves, and if they went outside the hyperspace field of the mother ship, they would find themselves left far behind in normal space.
“CAG, the inductor circuit’s fluctuating way outside the safety norms,” the ops chief told her. “I can’t launch you until–”
“Get this ship into space, damn you!” she shouted. “That is a direct order!” Her body felt like it was burning up with fever, and her only thoughts were those of the battle that awaited her beyond the obstacle of a mere piece
